Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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It is always SO much fun shooting a friend’s engagement session! I went to college with Delaney, but we actually met totally by chance before that.
For many years of my teenage life I was OVERLY obsessed with Jesse McCartney — long story short, I was in some sort of Jesse McCartney fan group online and ended up meeting Delaney first through there. Then, when I started looking at colleges, I saw that she went to Bryant University, one of my top schools. I reached out to her and she ended up giving me a tour when I visited.
Fast forward to freshman year at Bryant, when Delaney happened to be my RA! It was such a crazy, but amazing, coincidence.
Now, I am shooting her wedding in just over a year! I had the best time with Delaney and her fiancé, Shawn, shooting their engagement photos in Portsmouth, NH. Delaney and Shawn live together in northern Massachusetts (with their adorable pup, Juneau, might I add) so when we were figuring out where to do their engagement photos the timing totally had to be right!
I happened to be attending a wedding in Thornton, NH the next day, so I told Delaney that on our way up we could stop in Portsmouth — one of Delaney and Shawn’s favorite places — to do their photos.
Thankfully, the weather was absolutely perfect and it was totally worth the trip to get to work with these two.
I am absolutely obsessed with how Delaney and Shawn first met. As Delaney tells it, “So we actually grew up in the same town less than two miles apart but never knew each other. He was a grade above me and went to vocational high school and I went to the public high school. We were only in school together for a couple years in middle school and never crossed paths.”
“In 2017, Shawn became especially close with my best friend Courtney. They hung out all summer (not romantically at all) but again somehow we STILL never crossed paths. Finally, in November 2017, we were both at a mutual friend’s Friendsgiving. Court was travel nursing and I had a trip booked in a couple weeks to go visit her with my friend Sydnie. I went up to Shawn at the party and gave him a hard time that he was supposed to be Court’s best friend but hadn’t visited her yet, and her contract was over in a couple weeks (he will tell you that I was flirting with him but I deny it to this day). I told him the weekend me and Syd were going, and jokingly told him to book it…. not thinking he actually would.”
“SO in December 2017 me, Sydnie, Shawn, and his friend Kyle all went to visit Court in Nashville. After bar hopping all day for a Santacon bar crawl, I wanted to go down Broadway to see the huge Christmas tree. Me, Syd, and Shawn walked down, and someone (I say Syd but she says me… we will never know) thought it would be just hilarious if Shawn proposed to me in the middle of this tree viewing thing.”
“I took off some crappy $10 ring I was wearing and gave it to him, he got down on one knee, said something like “Delaney.. these past few days have just been so special to me…” I said yes, and we shared our first kiss in front of hundreds of bar hopping Santas. So technically this is the second time I said yes to his proposal!”
When they got back to Massachusetts, they went on their first real date less than 24 hours after being home from Nashville. From that moment on they were inseparable, and Delaney quickly fell in love (and knew he was the one).
Fast forward to this past April, when Shawn popped the question — for real this time! He brought Delaney up to Lake Sunapee in NH where his family has a house, and the plan was to get brunch on the lake and spend the day in the area before going to a nice dinner for their friend’s 30th birthday.
“I had suspicions because he’s not much of a planner and had the whole morning planned out, but it was literally the day of our friend’s birthday so I was like “there’s no way he’s actually going to take over Derek’s birthday and propose to me today.”
Well, he did — sorry Derek!
“We got brunch on the lake and then we walked over to the docks. He distracted me and got me to turn around. When I turned back around, he was on one knee, with the box facing the wrong way so I couldn’t even see the ring. I of course said yes! Then, we went back to his aunt’s house, where all of our closest friends and immediate family were waiting for us (that part I was super shocked about). We ended up celebrating all day/night, and Derek will forever share his birthday with our engagement date.”
Delaney and Shawn’s Vermont wedding next fall will be SO beautiful, and I can’t wait to be a part of their special day at Mountain Top Inn & Resort!
